In recognition of the 15th annual National Headache Awareness Week, the National Headache Foundation (NHF) is announcing a series of events across the country in order to educate the public about types of headache and their impact on daily living, as well as stressing the importance of seeking an accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatments. This year’s National Headache Awareness Week takes place June 1-7, 2008. Nearly 21 million people were reached last year through this successful annual campaign.

“One of our primary goals during National Headache Awareness Week is to gain recognition of headache pain as a real and legitimate condition,” said Dr. Seymour Diamond, Executive Chairman of the National Headache Foundation. “Over 45 million Americans get chronic, recurring headaches. Of this number, nearly 30 million have migraine headaches.”

Activities taking place across the country this week include headache screenings, educational seminars led by expert physicians, menstrual migraine awareness events and a 5-part podcast series focusing on women’s headache issues, a radio news release and the launch of a non-profit NHF channel on YouTube.

This year, the NHF is encouraging sufferers to “Get a Head S.T.A.R.T. on Your Headaches,” offering five easy-to-remember strategies for effective headache management and treatment:

Advocate — Be an advocate. Be informed. Be a participant in your headache care.

Resources — Utilize the National Headache Foundation as a resource. Visit www.headaches.org for the latest information about headache causes and treatments, or call 1-888-NHF-5552.

Treatment — Successful treatment may include medications and lifestyle changes. Work with your healthcare provider to find the right plan for you.

For the first time, this year’s campaign is drawing specific attention to menstrual migraines by designating Wednesday, June 4th as National Menstrual Migraine Awareness Day. In support of Menstrual Migraine Awareness Day efforts, the NHF will also be releasing new survey data from a recent poll of its website respondents suffering from menstrual migraine.

Taken each day, Lybrel provides a continuous supply of hormones without a break for a period, ever. It seems creepy to me, but The Well-Timed Period quotes a report that says that periods aren’t as necessary as they seem. Also, I’m one of the few women who actually likes having a period. (Maybe you didn’t want to know that?)

Here’s the roundup of migraine treatments. Other news posts I’m working on are about presentations at the International Headache Society’s conference (including cluster headache news), depression and chronic pain.

The survey found that patients taking triptans are significantly more likely than those taking barbiturates or opioids to report that their medication works well at relieving migraine symptoms, with sixty percent of triptan patients reporting that it describes their medication “extremely” or “very” well to say it relieves their migraines symptoms completely compared with 42 percent of patients taking barbiturates and opioids.

Patients taking opioids and barbiturates for their migraines also reported a lower quality of life than patients taking triptans, according to the survey. Patients taking these drugs were twice as likely as patients on triptans to say that migraines “always” limited their ability to exercise or play sports (35% vs. 14%), engage in sexual activity (33% vs. 17%), drive a car (28% vs. 14%), spend time with family and friends (28% vs. 8%) or simply get out of the house (33% vs. 15%).

Though many patients are prescribed barbiturates and opioids for their migraines, the majority indicated that they prefer their migraine medication to be FDA approved for the disease, not addictive and have few side effects. Seven out of ten patients (72%) surveyed said it’s “extremely” or “very” important that their prescription medications not be addictive, and eight out of ten patients (79%) said it’s “extremely”
or “very” important that their prescription medication have only minor side effects. Sixty-five percent said it’s important that their migraine medication be approved by the FDA to treat the disease.

Botulinum toxin type A has been reported to be effective in preventing migraine attacks in some patients but not in others.

[R]esearchers found that patients with cutaneous allodynia had experienced significant reductions (P <.01) in migraine frequency and number of headache days in response to botulinum toxin type A, whereas patients without cutaneous allodynia had no such improvement in symptoms.
[I]nvestigators concluded that cutaneous allodynia could be used to predict which migraine patients are likely to respond to prophylactic therapy with botulinum toxin.

Dihydroergotamine or DHE, an established drug for migraine, works well even when the attack is accompanied by super-sensitivity to touch or heat and cold, according to researchers.

Many migraine sufferers get relief from the newer drugs known as triptans, but these are less effective when people also have heightened skin sensitivity. This condition, called cutaneous allodynia, makes even a light touch to the face or neck feel painful.

“Unlike triptans, DHE works in the presence of allodynia, any time in the migraine attack,” lead investigator Dr. Stephen D. Silberstein told Reuters Health.

According to Greek researchers, migraine sufferers can eliminate symptoms altogether if they take higher doses of anti-migraine medicine for a longer period of time than is now customary. Another team of researchers has found that certain psychopharmaceuticals could serve as a new therapy option for persistent chronic headaches.

“In treating migraines, optimizing the effect of already available agents is at least as important a task as developing new substances.”

I’m a little wary of this article, but wanted you to know about it. Take it with a grain of salt.

Birth control pills are often used to treat menstrualmigraine by evening out hormone levels and sometimes to stop menstruation all together. In recent news are a medication that keeps women from menstruating and a tasty new pill.

In more bizarre contraceptive news, a mint-flavored chewable birth control pill called Femcon Fe is now available by prescription. Kids mistaking birth control pills for candy is already a risk, won’t making the pills taste good further the problem?

It sneaks up, so quiet that I don’t know it’s there. It bullies my body until I awaken, dizzy, nauseated and gasping in pain. My only choice is to go back to sleep, but it’s never a restful sleep. If I’m lucky, I’ll wake in the morning slightly out of sorts, but without much pain. More often, I have to sleep at least an extra two hours and the rest of my day will be mediocre at best.

These were my thoughts when I was awoken by a migraine for the fourth time in the last five nights. (Yes, I do mentally blog in the middle of the night!) This happened a few months ago too, but I’m not sure when it was or how many days the night migraines lasted.